Colonization cues of leaf- and root-inhabiting bacterial microbiota of Atractylodes lancea derived in vitro and in vivo

Abstract

Background and aims

Recent studies have demonstrated that leaf inhabiting endophytic bacteria can be selective derived from the air, and root inhabiting endophytic bacteria can selectively come from the soil. We wonder if inhabiting bacteria in plant leaves can also come from the roots, and vice versa.

Methods

We designed an experimental device to study plant Atractylodes lancea acquirements of bacterial endophytes from both the inside and abiotic environment. Inhabiting bacterial microbiota and volatile oil profiles in leaf and root compartment of Atractylodes lancea were estimated through Illumina Mi-seq platform and gas chromatography, respectively.

Results

The majority of inhabiting bacterial endophytes in leaves and roots were coming from the soil. However, air-borne bacteria also participated in defining root endophytic bacteria populations. The bacteria population from different Atractylodes lancea compartments are under different selection, thus ultimately root and leaf endophyte types differ, which ultimately influence the volatile oil profiles in the leaf and root compartments of Atractylodes lancea.

Conclusions

These results provide a first glimpse of the inhabiting bacterial microbiota that transmit between inside of plant leaf and root compartments.

Notes

Acknowledgements

We thank the GENESKY company for Illumina Mi-seq technical support and Kai Xu for the language editing assistance. This work were supported by program of Jiangsu Agriculture Science and Technology Innovation Fund (No. CX(17)2025), Natural Science Research of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions of China (No. 16KJB180015), National Natural Science foundation of China (No. 31300112), and Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD).

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Authors and Affiliations

1.Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Microbes and Functional Genomics, Jiangsu Engineering and Technology Research Center for Industrialization of Microbial Resources, College of Life SciencesNanjing Normal UniversityNanjingPeople’s Republic of China